‘The Walking Dead’s Josh McDermitt on Potential Eugene Romance

Will Eugene ever find true love on The Walking Dead? Star Josh McDermitt says the big-brained inventor is set on Rosita (Christian Serratos), who is now romantically entangled with Father Gabriel (Seth Gilliam) while carrying Siddiq’s (Avi Nash) child.

“I think if this were pre-apocalypse, he was always girl-crazy, but he might not have ever thought, ‘Oh, I have an opportunity to settle down with someone and build a life with them.’ But what’s kind of crazy is all of a sudden he’s found himself in this position where he’s like, ‘I’m a different person than I was, and here’s someone that I love, and I would love to spend my time with them, but they don’t love me back in that way.’ And so it’s really hard for him.

“And I think that, if he is gonna find someone else other than Rosita, it would take a lot — this is just my opinion, this isn’t canon — I think it would take a lot for him to move off Rosita.”

In creator Robert Kirkman’s comic books, Rosita similarly becomes pregnant after a fling with Siddiq but is in a relationship with Eugene. In Season Nine of the show, the pregnant Rosita was spared her comic book fate when she avoided falling victim to Alpha (Samantha Morton) and the Whisperers, ensuring the so-called “love quadrangle” extends into Season Ten.

“We see in the comic books that Rosita dies with her head on a pike and that hits Eugene so hard, because he was with her,” McDermitt said. “If she had died at this point in the television series, he wasn’t necessarily with her, it would have hit him in a different way. But now that she’s still there, I don’t know, it’s going to be hard for him to move off.”

Because Rosita is with Gabriel but pregnant by Siddiq, “Eugene just feels like he’s the boyfriend,” McDermitt added. “He feels like he has a place within this dynamic, that is not awkward to him, even though it is pretty awkward to the three of them.”

Eugene later does find love when his long-range radio project reveals a sizable new community, bringing with it radio operator Stephanie, who may have been the voice that came over the airwaves in the closing seconds of the Walking Dead Season Nine finale.